Rausch & Donlon - Can Be Murder 01 - Headaches Can Be Murder Read online

  Headaches Can Be Murder

  Marilyn Rausch

  and

  Mary Donlon

  Copyright © 2012 Marilyn Rausch and Mary Donlon

  ISBN 978-0-87839-872-0

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First Edition, September 2012

  Electronic Edition, September 2012

  Printed in the United States of America

  Published by

  North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.

  P.O. Box 451

  St. Cloud, Minnesota 56302

  www.northstarpress.com

  “Like” us on Facebook!

  Dedication

  In loving memory of my parents, Walter and Virginia, who loved crime stories. MJR

  For my home cheering section, Peter, Jessica, and Rachel. MJD

  Acknowledgements

  Without the guidance, support, and encouragement of two writers groups this novel would never have been completed. Our gratitude is extended to the Bob Group—Kathy, Lesley, Karen, and Linda—and the Neva Group—Nico, Mike, Deb, Elise, Jane, Becky, and Kevin.

  Our thanks to Romy C Photography for our portraits.

  North Star Press has welcomed us and guided us through the process. Their willingness to nurture new authors and promote regional literature is commendable.

  We have benefited greatly from our new friends in the North Star Authors Google Group and Sisters in Crime.

  Our families and friends have shared in our struggles and rejoiced in our triumphs, offered advice when needed and withheld it when it was not. To them we send our love.

  Chapter One

  Iowa, Saturday, November 13

  Through trial and error Chip Collingsworth had discovered his cell phone got the best reception from the roof of the tool shed on the Iowa property he had recently purchased. The rickety wooden ladder he found in the shed was missing the bottom two rungs. To get to the prime cell phone location, Chip had to launch himself onto the third rung of the old ladder, gingerly creep to the top, then perch carefully on the edge of the tin roof. The November sun, midway to its zenith, offered no warmth. Procrastinating, he pondered what he would do when ice and snow prevented him from reaching the roof.

  Finally he turned on his phone and checked his messages. Four from Lucinda Patterson, his literary agent, and one from his brother Parker.

  Tuesday, November 9, 9:05 a.m.

  Chip, this is Lucinda. Just a friendly little nudge to remind you your first 50 pages are due tomorrow. Hope sequestering yourself at your little hobby farm has gotten your creative juices flowing.

  Wednesday, November 10, 5:31 p.m.

  Chip … Lucinda. I fully expected to have your submission today. Perhaps it is in cyberspace somewhere between Iowa and New York. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here, but the terms of your contract are quite clear. I need those pages pronto.

  Thursday, November 11, 9:17 a.m.

  No return calls, no emails, no submission … I’m steamed, Chip. This is inexcusable. Mystery Ink has been getting nasty. Printing of the paperback of your first book goes to press tomorrow, and we had agreed to provide an excerpt of book two to insert at the end. What in the hell is going on? I don’t care how far away you are. Get me those pages now. Oh, and they better be damn good!

  Friday, November 12, 2:23 p.m.

  Chip, this is Lucinda Patterson. I’m calling to inform you that you are in breach of contract. You will be contacted shortly by our lawyers. All I can say is that you will be sorry, buddy. Your career is going down the toilet. Goodbye.

  Saturday, November 13, 10:31 a.m.

  Hey, Chip. I’m waiting to tee off at the club. Can’t believe we’re still golfing in November, but it’s a gorgeous day here in Baltimore. Have you turned into a hayseed yet? Call me. I have some good news.

  Chip surveyed his property, the homestead of a defunct farm. When people said that someplace was “in the middle of nowhere,” this was the place. The house and outbuildings had been abandoned after the original owner, a bachelor farmer, died, and the fields had been sold to neighboring farmers. All that was left was the buildings and yard. The barn listed to the left, looking as though one well-placed shove could reduce the once-mighty structure to a pile of timber.

  A line of tall Norway pines surrounded the farmyard. Beyond that, as far as Chip could see, stretched harvested cornfields.

  From the north a black v-shaped flock of Canadian geese came into view. As the birds glided overhead, Chip could hear their loud honks. They, too, seemed to be scolding him for his inertia.

  The fields had been lush with waving green stalks of corn on the day he arrived. The sun had been high in the sky. He had gotten in his Volvo the day after the divorce proceedings from his third wife and driven west with no place in mind and no idea of how he would survive financially. Wife number two was suing him for a chunk of his earnings from his book. He stopped in the middle of Iowa at a town named Turners Bend … population 932. “I bet my editor would cringe at the lack of an apostrophe in the name,” he said to himself as he entered the town. He had run out of gas … not gasoline, but the fumes that had been fueling his journey.

  Now he was sitting on the roof of a tool shed, being hounded by his agent and verbally assaulted by a bunch of birds. So went life, or at least his life.

  Chip found Parker on his contact list and dialed his brother’s cell number.

  “Hi, little brother, how’s your handicap these days?”

  “Better than Dad’s, and that’s all that counts. Hey, I finally got around to reading your book. Not bad. I understand it’s a blockbuster, and you’re on your way to being the next John Sandford or John Grisham. Your portrayals of Bambi and Erica were pretty thinly veiled, though. I can’t believe they haven’t put up a fuss.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard from Bambi’s lawyer, of course. She’s sleeping with him now, by the way. Erica could care less. I doubt she has even lowered herself to read it. She’s too busy spending her divorce settlement in Paris. So what’s the good news you called about?”

  “Oh, I was made chief of staff in Neurosurgery, so you can thank me for saving the family name.”

  “Congrats, I appreciate it. Hey, do you ever see Mary?”

  “We have coffee every once in a while at the hospital. She’s nursing director of the NICU, and quite happy, I think. Her husband’s a pretty decent guy, and she’s crazy about those two little boys. I still can’t believe you left her for Bambi.”

  “Let’s set the record straight. I didn’t leave her. She left me, and it’s probably one of the smartest things she ever did. I really screwed up. She was the best thing that happened to me, and I drove her away.”

  “Hey, don’t put yourself down. Sure you made some bad choices, but you’ve redeemed yourself now and you’re sitting on the top of the literary world.”

  Chip looked at the tool shed roof. He was on top of something, anyway. “Well, I don’t imagine I’ve redeemed myself with Dad.”

  “Sorry Chip, the course starter’s calling my foursome. Take care.”

  Charles Edgar Collingsworth III, son of Dr. Charles Edgar Collingsworth Jr., the eminent neurosurgeon, and grandson of Dr. Charles Edgar Collingsworth Sr., the world-renowned pioneer of neurosurgery, sat on the roof of a tool shed in the middle of Iowa. His younger brother was now in the place where
his family had expected Chip to be.

  And Chip, what was he? He was a medical school dropout, who was once married to a smart, hard-working nurse, and who then married a conniving gold-digging cocktail waitress, and subsequently married his prominent Baltimore divorce lawyer. Yes, his own divorce lawyer divorced him! In the end the substantial inheritance from his grandfather was reduced to his Volvo and his laptop.

  He had his therapist to thank, or perhaps blame, for him becoming a writer.

  “Write down your feelings, Chip. Write about who you want to be. Visualize yourself as a successful, purpose-driven person,” Dr. Cooper had said.

  “I assume you mean instead of the loser that I am,” Chip had replied.

  He did write, but not exactly what his therapist had suggested. He wrote The Cranium Killer, a whodunit about a serial killer who removed the brains of his victims with surgical precision. Two of the victims were an unscrupulous cocktail waitress and a cold-hearted female attorney. He described their deaths in gory detail, dredging up anatomy lessons from his past. The hero was a brilliant neurosurgeon called in by the police to consult on the crimes. Dr. John Goodman had devoted himself to his profession and had never married, although many young, beautiful women lusted after him. But he was too busy saving lives and tracking down serial killers to return their affections.

  One day in a New York bar, Chip sat down next to a tall, striking woman in a gray business suit and stiletto heels—Lucinda Patterson. A few drinks later, he had a literary agent. Two weeks later, she had sold his book to Mystery Ink, a small publisher. Much to his surprise and Lucinda’s pleasure, the mystery-reading public was seduced by his lurid descriptions and charmed by the dashing doctor. Lucinda envisioned a multi-book series and signed Chip to a three-book contract. With the publisher’s advance, he had updated the plumbing and electricity in his farmhouse.

  Chip had set up his laptop, but nothing happened. He had vented his anger at Bambi and Erica by literally dissecting them in his first book. He had assuaged his guilt by creating as his protagonist the perfect doctor his father wanted him to be. He had eradicated his loser status and become a successful author for at least a brief illusionary period of time.

  But he had nothing more to write about. He was in hot water again. Lucinda had cleverly written a penalty clause in his contract. He had to produce two more books on a tight timetable or he would lose a bundle of revenue. Dr. Cooper might say he would lose something a lot more important than money—he would lose his newly gained self-respect and purpose and his motivation to be “self-actualized,” whatever the hell that meant.

  It was cold on the shed roof. The wind nipped his ears, and his nose began to run. He watched tiny flakes float down and land on his jacket, each leaving a wet splotch seconds after touching the nylon shell. He turned around to descend the ladder. He planted his right foot on the top rung. His left foot reached the next rung, and the rotting wood splintered.

  He fell to the ground. He heard it. The crack of his skull as it hit the ground. Chip wondered if he was “seeing stars.” No. It took him a few seconds to realize they were big, fat snowflakes. An image from Giants in the Earth sprang into his mind … the farmer who goes out to his barn in a blizzard and isn’t found until the snow melts in spring. Would this be how it would end for him? Alone? With no one who gave a rip about him, except for a money-hungry literary agent.

  None of his limbs were bent. He had landed flat on this back and hit his head on the frozen mud that surrounded the shed. The wind had been knocked out of him.

  He willed himself to breathe. Cautiously he lifted his head and felt the back of his skull. He recalled from his all-too-brief days in medical school that a bump growing out rather than swelling inward was a good sign. He inspected with his hand. Egg-sized bump, no blood, no laceration.

  Slowly he rose and made his way into the house, retrieving his cell phone from the ground. He took three Double Strength Tylenol and poured himself a glass of Jack Daniel’s. His head was throbbing with growing intensity and his eyes were playing funny tricks on him; images wavered before his eyes.

  As he stared at the yellow linoleum floor of his kitchen, it came to him. In a flash of strobbing light, he visualized a frozen body found in the snow, perplexing forensic evidence, and the handsome Dr. Goodman called back into action.

  He opened his laptop on the kitchen table and began to write the opening chapter of his second novel. He followed the well-used formula of starting with a dead body. He would end with the solution of the murder. Filling in the space between would be the challenge.

  Chapter Two

  Brain Freeze, By Charles E. Collingsworth III

  Castle Danger, Minnesota

  Mitch Calhoun sat naked at the scarred pine desk, scribbling frantically. His normally tight, neat script was long and sprawling on the ripped out pages from a long forgotten coloring book. The tip of the pen ripped through the frail paper as he underlined his thoughts again and again.

  The pen dropped to the floor as he reached up to grip his head, trying to keep it from exploding. A chain of multi-colored lights blinked in his vision, a strobe light show making him nauseous. Unsteady feet carried him into the bathroom. He flicked on the light switch, but the brightness caused another shrieking pain in his skull and he snapped it back off. The faucet handle of the shower creaked as he turned it as hot as it would go; water pipes groaned. The smell of sulfur from the old well added to his queasiness as he leaned against the wall, willing for the blessed heat to come to the water.

  When steam fogged up the mirror, he stumbled into the spray, not bothering to close the shower door. Closing his eyes against the scalding sting, he waited for relief that almost always came from the hot water. Instead the pain intensified. He grabbed his head again, pushing in from both sides as if to hold it together. Dropping to his hands and knees, a wave of nausea rose up and he vomited on the floor of the shower. He crawled out of the shower onto the yellowed linoleum.

  The strobe lights continued their triangular flashes in his head. Closing his eyes brought no relief. He crawled along the gritty floor on his elbows. Reaching the desk, he attempted to pull himself upright using the chair as a crutch. The chair toppled over and he fell backwards, cracking his head on the barn-board floor. Stars co-mingled with the flashing lights of his vision.

  He lay there for a moment, trying to find an inner reserve of strength. People have to know. Sitting up slowly, carefully, he reached above his head and pulled down the sheets of the coloring book. He turned over to crawl on his hands and knees once more, gripping the sheets in his hand. He made it to the outside door, reached up to grip the brass knob and tried to stand upright. The pain pushed him down to the floor again. It was a struggle not to pass out.

  After the third try, he managed to open the door. A burst of cold air and snow swirled around his wet, naked body, freezing the drops of water to his skin. He winced at the natural light streaming into the darkened cabin. His stomach lurched, and he leaned forward to retch. He fell out the door and landed hard on the frozen stoop.

  The ice beneath his body was razor sharp and it ripped into his flesh. Mitch Calhoun did not feel anything, however. The aneurysm had done its job.

  “Hey, Doc. What do we have here?” Detective Mike Frisco looked down at the frozen man on the stoop illuminated by bright spot lights. Snow had been carefully scooped away, but it continued to fall in big, fat flakes from the black sky, threatening to cover up the body once more.

  Blue and red lights bounced off the planes of the detective’s face. He shivered, hunching his shoulders against the snow that threatened to blow down the collar of his jacket. It was dark, it was cold, and he wanted to be anywhere but here, staring at some bare-assed dead guy. Why the hell do I live in this tundra again?

  Medical Examiner Sid Jurgenson stood up from his crouch over the body. “Hard to say, Frisco. Looks like it’s gonna be awhile before we can even thaw out the body enough to unstick him from the stoop. The gu
y’s a friggin’ popsicle. What an idiot. Even on my best drunks I knew better than to wander out into a Minnesota snowstorm without any clothes on.”

  Frisco shifted on his feet, trying to restore some warmth to his toes.

  “So, if this is a case of some drunken bonehead who wandered out and found himself frozen to death, what do you need me for?”

  “We don’t have a certain cause of death, on account of his being an icicle and all. And we didn’t find any booze in the cabin. You need to be involved from the get-go, just in case this turns out to be a homicide.”

  “Gotcha. Do we have any idea who he is?”

  “Joe over there …” Sid thumbed in the direction of one of the officers, “… found some ID in the cabin. Our victim is Mitch Calhoun. He’s outta Maple Grove. Poor bastard’s only twenty three.” He shook his head. “What a waste.”

  “Who found the body?”

  “Ethel Johnson. She’s worked for this sorry excuse of a resort for years. She came over to clean this afternoon, found the door wide open and the shower running. When she tried walking through what she thought was a snow drift at the door, she tripped and fell on our buddy here. Freaked her out but good.” He chuckled. “Guess falling on some dead guy’s bare backside will do that to you.”

  “Did she move anything?”

  “Nah. She took one look at the dead guy and screamed to high heaven.”

  Sid turned back towards the cabin in time to see Joe crab-walking around the body with a large aluminum pot, steam rolling out into the cold air. “Excuse me, sirs.” When they stepped to the side to let him through, he held out the pot in front of him with brown potholders, trying not to spill the boiling water on his uniform. “Thought this might help get the vic loosened from the pavement.”