Chapter Twenty-Two – Lucy

 

As soon as Carter was out of the room, Elaine Marten began to smile as she leaned across the table.

“What’s it like dating your partner like that? Kent and I did a lot of charity work together, and I loved it.”

Her question’s directness made me flush red and recoil in embarrassment. “Excuse me?” I stammered out. “I don’t think that’s really an appropriate question to ask.”

“Oh my lord,” Elaine said, sitting back a little, a frown tugging at the corner of her lips in her distress, “I’m so sorry. I hadn’t realized you two weren’t.”

“And I don’t know why you’d think that, either, Ms. Marten. Carter and I only just met.”

“Really?” she asked, her smile returning like the sun on a winter’s day. It looked like she hadn’t smiled like this in weeks. “I only assumed you two were because of the looks you gave each other. You just remind me of me and Kent, that’s all.”

Immediately, I felt bad, had to control the internal groan at my reaction. Here she was, a widow, a woman who’d had maybe the primary linchpin yanked from the machinery of her life, and how did I react to her trying to find some joy? I’d snapped at her like a bitch.

And, then, there were the deeper feelings towards what she’d said. About me and Carter dating. About us being a couple. Which meant, he was looking at me the same way I was looking at him. Which meant…

Her eyes seemed distant as she looked past me, like she was really seeing back to just weeks ago when her husband was still around. “He does this little thing where he tenderly touches my elbow when he’s about to leave the room. I’m sorry, I just…” As she trailed off, she touched the spot on the bend of her arm where I imagined her husband would have gently laid his own hand, and that wistfulness in her eyes just seemed to grow stronger.

I wondered if she even realized she was using the present tense to describe her husband, or if the reality of things just hadn’t settled in for her. I smiled a little at the bittersweetness of it, glanced down at the notebook in front of me, and didn’t reply at first.

“Your partner just reminded me of him, a little bit,” she said after a moment, this time remembering to use the proper tense. “Not, of course, with the way he looked or anything, I mean. But with the way he touched your shoulder before he excused himself. That’s all.” She reached up, dabbed at the corner of her eye as she blinked, and looked away. “I’m sorry. It’s still just overwhelming. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

My heart sank further as I watched her tear up.

To have it all. A nice house, a loving husband? Only to have it taken away in a flash of heat and flames? I reached across the table, deftly avoiding the takeout cartons scattered between us like giant white clams, and covered her hand with mine.

“Don’t worry,” I said, “There’s no forgiveness needed. You’re not hurting me, or offending me in any way. I know this is probably the most difficult time you’ve ever had to endure. I can’t even begin to imagine what you’re going through.”

She sniffled a little, smiled through the tears shimmering in her eyes. “So, you needed to ask me some questions, right? About my husband?”

“That’s right,” I said softly as I returned my attention to my notes, to the questions Carter and I had written up in my kitchen over coffee just a short time before. As I read back through them, I couldn’t help but feel that they seemed an awful lot like a homicide detective’s questions. More so than a fire inspector’s. It didn’t matter that they were buried within a hundred other mundane details of the man’s life, in an effort not to alert the widow that we thought there was foul play involved. They were still questions designed to find a murderer, not a source of ignition or accelerant.

But, if Carter was to be believed, then this had probably been done to Kent Marten. It wasn’t just a chance accident that had randomly affected him. This was more gun to the back, or knife in the dark, than it was lightning strike on a sunny day. And, at the end of the day, I believed in the big bear shifter. Believed in what was right in front of my eyes.

“Now, Elaine, as you know, the fire that took your husband’s life was extremely puzzling, which is part of the reason why Carter has come onto the case as a kind of outside consultant. Now, by looking at Mr. Marten’s death, we’ve begun to examine similarities with it to the other fires in recent weeks, and started to, um, correlate everything we can on all of them.”

She leaned forward a little bit. “So, you think they may be connected?”

“It’s a possibility we haven’t discounted. Maybe they’re not all directly linked, but perhaps there’s some kind of underlying cause that’s similar across the board. Places they’ve gone, people they know. Clothing by the same manufacturer, even.”

“That’s a pretty wide net, isn’t it? Kent knew people all over town, went all sorts of places. There’s our jogging club, the small business association…”

“Well, this is a very odd case.”

“And you need all this information?”

Deeper into the house, Carter flushed the toilet and closed the door to the bathroom, sending Elaine Marten’s eyes flickering in that direction.

“Ideally, yes. It really will help narrow it down.” I paused, wet my lips. “Also, and this might be an odd question, but did your husband have any enemies?”

Her eyes widened as she sat back in her chair. She slowly began to shake her head. “Enemies? Kent didn’t have any enemies, Inspector Skinner. He was a kind, caring man. He spent his life helping people.” She took a moment, looked away at all the empty takeout containers surrounding us, at the plastic bags she’d allowed like so many unwanted feelings of grief to pile up around her. “Do you think this was something more than an accident?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head emphatically, “I didn’t say that. We’re just looking at all the possibilities, that’s all.”

“And one of those possibilities is that this was done by someone. Is that what you’re implying?”

God, I wished Carter would get back here and help me pull my ass out of the fire on this one. She was clearly distressed, and I knew I’d been the cause of it by bringing this whole thing up. I don’t know why I thought I’d be fine to do this kind of interview, this kind of tiptoeing around the truth. This wasn’t my kind of thing.

“No, ma’am,” Carter said from the dining room entrance, before coming in and pulling out a chair at the end of the table. “That’s not what we’re implying. We really are just trying to get a feel for the man, see if there’s anything we might be missing. This is a very complicated case.”

Our united front seemed to soothe her for a moment, and her hackles began to lower back to their normal position.

I glanced over at my partner, eyebrow raised questioningly as I tried to see if he’d discovered any clues that might lead us to the culprit.

Lips pressed firmly together into such a thin line they were barely discernible within the thatch of his black beard, he shook his head the smallest of fractions. Nothing. “Did you notice any changes in him?” Carter asked as he turned back to the widow. “Recently, I mean. Did he smell odd? Changes in behavior in the weeks leading up to his death?”

She stared at him for a moment, an almost blank expression on her face. “Odd smells?” she asked, laughing a little.

Carter and I exchanged a glance. “Ma’am?” Carter asked.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” she replied, waving her hand dismissively. “Just, Kent has this obsession.”

“Obsession?” Carter and I both asked at the same time.

She glanced back and forth between us as she continued. “About three years ago, maybe, he started to complain about smelling rotten eggs all the time. He was completely convinced everyone else smelled it. That he was somehow causing it with his running. And, since we’re talking about my husband here, he decided he was going to fix it. He went online and found some health blog that said green foods are deodorizers, that they keep your body from making ugly smells.”

“See?” I said to Carter. “More nutrients. They’re good for you.”

He just sat back in his chair a little bit, a concerned look on his face. Like now he was smelling the rotten eggs.

“But that’s the whole thing,” Elaine said. “He didn’t have any gross smells to him. Nothing about him had changed at all! Kent, though, was convinced that the smell was on him, though, so he always stopped by that smoothie shop, drank those juiced wheatgrass shots of his every morning for years and years.”

“Three years, though?” Carter asked, that look still plastered on his face. “That’s an awful lot of wheatgrass.”

“And there was no medical explanation for it?” I asked, writing down some notes on my pad.

“Doctors couldn’t find anything,” she replied. “Did an MRI, everything. At first they thought it was some kind of neurological damage, or something wrong with the nerves in his nose, but they never managed to find anything.”

“Three years?” Carter asked, looking my direction. “And this smoothie shop he went to every morning, it’s the one where…?”

She nodded. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to drink a protein shake again, to be honest.” She paused, then, “You don’t think the wheatgrass had something to do with it, do you? I mean, I know it’s crazy to think something like that, but so is all of this, isn’t it?”

“What? No!” I said, glancing at Carter, who, from the look on his face, seemed to have the exact opposite opinion of my own. “Worst that it’ll do is stain your teeth green and taste awful! I wouldn’t worry about that or think it had anything to do with your husband’s death, at all.”

Beside me, my partner finally decided to speak. “Well, Ms. Marten, I think we have everything we need for the moment. Is it all right if we leave these questions with you, and you fill them out when you’re able? We still have a few more visits to make today before it gets late.”

She looked back and forth between us, confused, as she seemed to try and discern what was going on. “Yes, of course. I can complete this for you. But what is that really going to do to help find out what happened to my husband?”

I shot Carter a quick look, and he just gave me a little nod.

Forcing a smile, despite my own confused anger, I tore the sheet out of my notebook and passed it over to Elaine. “There you go. We’ll keep in touch.” I turned to Carter. “Ready?”

He nodded, and we both started to get up from the table.

Elaine went to rise, as well, her arms wrapped around her torso in a feeble self-hug. She trailed behind us as we left the dining room, saying, “I just hope you two manage to figure this all out. And, if it is something that’s bigger, that’s affecting more people, I’m praying you can figure out a way to stop it before it hurts another family. We’d already dodged the one bullet three years ago. I just never imagined we’d have something like that happen twice in our lives.”

As Carter reached for the front door, I stopped in the entryway and turned back to Ms. Marten. “Excuse me? Three years ago? What happened, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she replied. “I thought you knew, that it was in Kent’s file or some such. We were both at the Christmas tree lighting a few years ago.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, I hadn’t realized that.”

“Christmas tree lighting?” Carter asked from behind us.

I stepped to the side, so I could see Carter a little better. “Shamrock used to have a town Christmas tree, and a big lighting ceremony every year with the mayor and everyone, school choirs, the high school band. Three years ago, though, we had a really dry year that, when combined with some bad wiring on the lighting, caused a big fire. The whole tree went up in flames and toppled over, nearly falling right into the crowd. We managed to get most of the people out, but we still had quite a few injuries. Even my boss, Cassidy, was hurt in the flames while he was pulling people out.”

As I spoke, Elaine closed her eyes and just shook her head. “It was just awful,” Elaine confirmed as she reopened her eyes. “A horrible tragedy. I’d thought the city was finally getting over the whole thing, and then all this started.”

“Yeah,” I said, “it was just awful. I was working with Shamrock FD at the time, and got called in. Four alarm fire, with all the firehouses from the surrounding counties.”

“You were?” she asked, smiling faintly as she grabbed my hand. “One of your men helped pull Kent out of the worst of it. He was…better off than the rest, with only his arm singed by the flames. Thank you, for that. For being there.”

I winced a little. “Just doing my job, ma’am.” As if I couldn’t feel any worse about this whole thing. Two people who loved each other, dodging a freak accident just three years before. And now this? It was almost too much. “Sorry again for your loss, Elaine. It sounds like you and your husband loved each other very much.”

She smiled a little lopsided smile as Carter turned back to the door. “That’s the funny thing,” she said, her eyes just beginning to tear up again. “I still love him. Death hasn’t changed that at all.”

“Ready, Lucy?” Carter asked from behind me, his voice a raspy whisper.

I glanced back over my shoulder, gave him a nod. “Yeah, let’s go.”

Elaine Marten stayed at the open door for a long minute as we headed down the sidewalk to the street in front of her house and, from there, turned to go down to the Jeep. We walked together in silence, partially to make sure we got out of hearing of the Marten residence, and partially because Carter seemed to have something on his mind. Maybe he’d picked up some clue I hadn’t?

“Any idea where this smoothie shop is?” Carter asked as we both started to climb into the Jeep’s cab.

I stopped in my tracks, halfway up into the passenger seat. “Don’t tell me you think it’s the fucking wheatgrass!”

“Well, there’s nothing in the house, as far as I can tell,” he said, running his fingers back through his hair in clear frustration. He already had his keys in his other hand, about to slide them into the ignition.

“Well, what about the smell?” I asked as I climbed the rest of the way into the seat and went to buckle up. “Wasn’t that one of the big signs? Isn’t that how you knew it was one to begin with, because of the way the Hawkins scene smelled like rotten eggs?”

“What about it? It’s all off from what I know about possessions. He should have been smelling it, but so should she. Everyone around him should have. Hell, I should have smelled it while I was in the house, even. And three years? I’ve never heard of a possession that lasted three years, so it was probably some actual medical problem they could never find the cause of. Possessions are normally a couple weeks, at best.” He paused.

“What?”

“Well, it may have been a longer-term possession. Maybe.” He seemed to stop, consider his own argument, but quickly shook his head. “No, that’s not possible. The person has to willingly allow one of them in for it to last longer. But he doesn’t fit with that type, either.”

“Why not?”

“Too goddamned nice!” Carter nearly growled, like he was disappointed in Kent Marten’s stellar record as a human. “In the last couple of years, it looks like he actually increased the amount of giving and charity work he’d been doing. If he’d been a dick, we’d have something to investigate. Far as I can tell, though, this guy was squeaky clean. Damn near a saint!”

“Three years?” I asked, biting my lower lip as I looked straight ahead, out through the Jeep’s windshield. At fall approaching. Pretty soon, Thanksgiving would be here, and the lights would come up on the outsides of these houses for the holidays, and then it would be time for all the kids to crowd around the Christmas tree and tear into their gifts. Eggnog, midnight masses, caroling, snow on the ground. Candy canes and Santa Claus.

And Christmas trees.

Shit.

I reached down, unbuckled my seat belt, and pushed open the passenger side door.

“Hey,” Carter said as I hopped down. “Lucy! What are you doing?”

“Something Elaine Marten said when we were leaving,” I replied just before I slammed the door shut and took off at a jog.

Behind me, Carter threw open his door and came up behind me, his boots slapping the street with every step. “Lucy, what’s got into you?”

“A hunch,” I said as I slowed to a walk at the front of the Marten house, turned, and began to fast-walk up to the front door.

“Great,” he said as he came up behind me, his long strides easily overtaking my own.

“You know,” I said, stopping when we were about ten feet from the door and planting my hands on my hips as I glared up at him, “I’ve been trusting you this whole goddamn time, and it turns out you might have been wrong.”

He frowned a little bit, looking away as his frown deepened. “Well, I mean, I’m just going on what we know about these things.”

I reached out, put my hand on his big bicep. “And I’m just going on what I know about my town. Okay?”

“Yeah,” he said with a nod. “Yeah. Okay. Let’s see how this plays out.”

Together, we turned and headed up to the front door, rang the doorbell again.

This time around, Elaine Marten was faster to the door. The only major difference from before being that her eyes were red and puffy, and damp streaks ran down her cheeks.

God, I felt like shit for being the reason she’d cried like that. That Carter and I had been the cause of her tears. But, feeling like crap about something didn’t make it go away, and it didn’t fix it. And, finding the reason her husband died wouldn’t do that, either.

All it would do was maybe save some lives. And some tears might be worth that.

“Yes?” she asked as she dabbed a tissue at one eye. “Did you forget something, Inspector?”

“Just need some clarification, and then I’ll be back out of your hair,” I said. “You mentioned that he started to think he was smelling the rotten egg smell about three years ago? Am I remembering that correctly?”

Seeming confused, she nodded. “That’s right, yes. Three years.”

“Was it before or after the fire at the Christmas tree lighting?”

She bit her lower lip as she looked away, her eyes searching the sky above both my and Carter’s heads as she tried to recall.

I held my breath, held my tongue.

“After,” she said. “I’m almost completely sure. In fact, I’m almost positive.”

“How?” Carter asked, his eyes brightening a little despite the seriousness of the situation, like he knew this was the lead we’d been looking for, but he still wanted to make sure. “If you don’t mind my asking?”

“Well, we were trying to get in for an MRI, like I mentioned, because his doctor thought it was some kind of neurological problem. Remember? Well, it was right around the holidays, and we were having a lot of problems with scheduling it because of shopping and Christmas parties, but we managed to get in on the afternoon of his office party, and ended up being late because of our having to drive into Chicago for it. And then, of course, right after that, he started to get us involved in all those charities.”

“Just after, you say?” Carter asked, turning to me. His eyes were lit up, the confusion and lack of direction burned away by the realization.

She nodded. “Yes. Kent had always been a kind and giving soul. But something about that night, maybe just being that close to such a tragedy, and seeing so much death, really changed him. Like he’d seen the light.”

I turned to Carter, eyebrow raised, as if to say: “I told you so.”

“Thank you, Ms. Marten,” Carter said, nodding to the widow. “You’ve been a great help.”

“O-o-okay,” Elaine Marten stammered out.

We didn’t have time to respond, though. We were already practically running for the Jeep.