Free An Act Of Murder by Linda Rosencrance Page A

to and she didn’t know what to do.”
    Like Jenny, Rachel never thought that Kim actually would go through with her plan to kill Steve. She was in a total state of shock. In fact, after Maureen called Rachel to tell her about Steve’s death, Rachel called a friend who was a state trooper and asked for advice. The trooper said she had to turn Kim in.
    â€œThat’s when Rachel called Kim back to say she knew Kim killed Steve,” Maureen said. “But Kim denied it and said it was a total coincidence that Steve died in the same way as her plan. Kim told Rachel she didn’t do it.”
    Sunday evening didn’t go much better than the day had at the Hrickos’ house. Maureen soon realized that Kim’s mom wasn’t in any condition to take care of Kim or Sarah, so Maureen decided to stay the night. Although she was worried about Mike, she knew that his parents would take care of him and their children.
    The next day, Monday, Maureen made calls to the morgue, the funeral director, and Steve’s family.
    â€œThat was not pretty,” Maureen said. “I called the funeral director and told him we needed to make arrangements for the funeral. But he said he’d been in contact with the Hrickos and they were having a problem because Kim wanted Steve cremated and the Hrickos didn’t, because he was Catholic.”
    Maureen had no idea what the funeral director was talking about, so she told him she’d talk to Kim and call him back.
    Kim explained to Maureen that Steve wanted to be cremated.
    â€œWe were at Steve’s grandmother’s funeral and she had been cremated. While we were at the funeral, Steve said that’s what he wanted. It was clean. It was neat. It was closure. And that’s what I want to do for him,” Kim said.
    Maureen bought Kim’s explanation hook, line and sinker, so she called Steve’s sister Jennifer and told her what Kim said.
    â€œSo he’ll be cremated because Kim’s his wife and that’s what she’s saying he wanted,” Maureen told Jennifer. But Jennifer insisted that Steve must not be cremated, because that wasn’t what the family wanted.
    â€œI thought I was doing Kim a favor being the liaison, because she was acting like she didn’t want to talk to anyone because she was too upset,” Maureen recalled. “But I think it was really because she didn’t want to fight with Jennifer.”
    After going a few rounds with Jennifer, Maureen called the morgue again and asked when the medical examiner was going to release Steve’s body, so Kim could make the final funeral arrangements. Maureen was surprised when the medical examiner said he wasn’t releasing Steve’s body immediately because he was going to do a postmortem examination of the body in order to determine the cause of death.
    â€œIsn’t it obvious? He died in a fire,” Maureen said.
    The medical examiner explained it was just standard procedure and he wouldn’t be releasing the body until Tuesday. Maureen then went upstairs and told Kim the medical examiner wasn’t going to release the body until he performed an autopsy.
    Kim went nuts. She just started flipping out.
    â€œWhy are they doing that? He was burned in a fire,” said an extremely agitated Kim. “They think I killed him. They think I did something.”
    â€œKim, they don’t think you did anything, and, if anything, this will protect you, to make sure you didn’t do anything,” Maureen said, trying to calm Kim down. “All they’re trying to do is determine what the actual cause of death was and once they determine that, it will be fine. It’s not a big deal.”
    Even as she spoke, more little red flags were starting to go up in Maureen’s mind, but she tried to put them out of her head.
    â€œAnd all this time Mike’s telling me something’s not right here, Kim did something,” Maureen said.