Читать книгу What Stella Wants - Nancy Bartholomew - Страница 11

Brookhaven Manor sat on a small knoll overlooking the bypass just outside Glenn Ford. It could’ve been any generic nursing home in any town in America with its low-slung, redbrick exterior and the long front porch lined with white rocking chairs. I stared up at the building wondering if rocking chairs were a requirement of aging. Every assisted-living and retirement home I’d ever visited had them.

Jake parked in the small visitors’ lot and studied the grounds. “Nice for old people, bad for security,” he muttered.

I surveyed the tree-filled grounds, noting the many paths and benches tucked away into what would normally be cozy nooks for chatting or reading but were now a haven for hiding out or trespassing unseen.

“A regular nightmare,” I agreed.

We hadn’t even reached the massive glass front doors before Marygrace Llewellen was outside, hurrying toward us with a grim expression on her face.

“Don’t go in yet,” she said. “I want to tell you something.” She looked over her shoulder, as if checking for pursuers, then turned back. “I’ve talked to some of the staff and apparently there was an as-needed PRN attendant on duty last night. She was sent by the staffing service we regularly use but it was her first time with us.”

“Was she assigned to Baby?” I asked.

“No, but one of the nurses saw her in that hall and directed her back to her assigned post. At the time she figured the girl was just lost, but in light of what happened later…”

Marygrace looked back over her shoulder again, obviously nervous. “She’s back again today, that’s what I wanted to tell you. I haven’t spoken with her and the police haven’t made it out here yet to take their report, either, so I thought I’d leave her to you guys.”

I smiled. “Good thinking, Marygrace. Where is she?”

“Follow me. They have her working on the North Hall today. I asked the charge nurse to have her wait for me in the conference room.” Marygrace turned and set off rapidly through the entrance doors, across the wide linoleum foyer and down a hallway that ran to the left of the entry.

When we reached the North Hall nurses’ station, Marygrace stopped and motioned to a large, heavy-set black woman in white scrubs.

“Is she in the conference room?”

The woman nodded. “Should be. That’s where I told her to go, but her English isn’t too good.” The nurse shook her head. “I wish they’d send us some help that we can actually communicate with. Half the time they babble off something and I don’t know what they’re saying.”

Marygrace pointed to a room at the end of the hallway as Jake’s pager went off, startling both of us and causing a little man in a wheelchair to stop and stare at Jake.

“It’s a call-out, ain’t it?” he said. He looked irritated. “Damned things! Tell ’em I’m off and ain’t no way I’m coming in!” With this, he rolled off down the hallway.

Marygrace smiled. “He’s a retired firefighter. He thinks he’s still on duty.”

Jake’s expression changed imperceptibly but I saw his eyes darken and knew something was up.

“Go on ahead and get started with her,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “I’d better check in with Spike.” He withdrew his cell phone from his pocket and turned to walk away from us. Whatever it was, it was serious and it was not something he wanted Marygrace to overhear.

I covered for him by starting off toward the conference room with Marygrace. “Now, I don’t want to scare her, so why don’t you introduce me as a friend of Baby’s instead of a P.I.?”

Marygrace bobbed her head up and down in agreement as she reached for the door handle and led me into the large room. Windows overlooking a pond and the woods beyond them lined the far wall and gave the room a feeling of unending space. A massive conference table flanked by leather chairs took up most of the room. I looked around, noting the sparse countertops that lined the other walls and the impersonal art that had been hung in an attempt to add warmth to the stiff furniture. It was the standard conference room. It was also empty.

Marygrace took one look and stuck her head out the door. “Sandra, she’s not in here. Page her, would you?”

Someone else walked by the room and I heard Marygrace asking her if she’d seen the CNA.

“I saw her go into the ladies’ room about five minutes ago,” the female voice answered.

I intervened. “Where’s the ladies’ room?” I asked Marygrace. “I think I’ll go check. Give me her name and a brief description.” My internal alarm system was beginning to sound the red alert. I scanned the hallway for Jake and didn’t see him anywhere. This wasn’t going so well and we’d only just arrived.

“The ladies’ room is back off the lobby next to the dining room. The girl’s name is Aida. She’s tall, with long, dirty-blond hair that’s got a perm, you know, so it sort of falls in ringlets. She’s thin and she’ll be wearing scrubs, probably green. The agency we use gives their temps complementary uniforms and most of them wear those.”

I started off down the hallway with Marygrace on my heels.

“You’d better stay back there, in case Aida comes back. We wouldn’t want to miss her.”

Surprisingly, Marygrace didn’t question me and returned to the room.

I kept looking for Jake as I walked up the hallway but he was nowhere to be found. As I passed the lobby, I looked down the opposite hallway, but he wasn’t there, either. Now where had he disappeared to?

The ladies’ room was clearly labeled in big white letters. I paused in front of the door, pulled my Lady Smith out of its holster and dropped it into my jacket pocket just in case, then slowly entered the restroom.

It was a small, three-stall room with two sinks and a window above the heating unit at the far end of the room. As I watched, a green ass and a pair of legs vanished through the open window.

“Hey!” I cried and went into autopilot. I ran, scaled the metal heater and scrambled up the side of the wall and through the open window.

There was a six-foot drop to the ground below. I looked up and saw a figure in green scrubs running across the back parking lot, headed for the woods and thought, why me? Where’s Jake? Damn!

I jumped, dropping hard to my knees before straightening and pursuing my quarry into the woods. She had a good head start on me but I was in shape, and with effort, I began to slowly close the gap between us. And then she disappeared. She simply vanished into the thick stand of pine trees in front of me.

I stopped, stuck my hand into my jacket pocket and brought out the gun.

“Aida,” I called. “I just want to talk to you.”

I stood still, listening. The air was thick with the humidity that signaled an oncoming snowstorm and all the small ordinary sounds. Where was she? I tried to remember the area around the nursing home, searching for a mental map in my mind that would let me guess how she might try to escape so I could anticipate her next move.

Where the hell was Jake when I needed backup?

I crept slowly forward, still listening, barely breathing as I scanned the fir trees ahead of me. I slipped the safety off the Lady Smith and slid my forefinger along the smooth barrel of the gun.

I never saw her coming.

She landed the first blow to the side of my head, a swift, strong punch that I’m certain left knuckle indentations in my skull and sent my gun flying out of my hand. She had a good jump on me, but I landed the next punch. I whirled around, caught sight of cold, green eyes and faked right before upper-cutting her with a solid left.

Neither of us said a word. We fought in silence, each too intent on landing the finishing blow. I felt the air sail out of her lungs as I landed a kick to her solar plexus. Her answering move threw me off my feet and onto the hard ground. I saw my gun lying a short distance away and rolled to grab it. My fingers had just closed around the firm metal grip when lights exploded somewhere behind my left ear and the world around me swirled into an inky darkness.

When I came to, Aida had vanished. I thought I heard footsteps running away in the distance, but it could easily have been the anguished pounding of my head. I struggled to my feet, leaned against a nearby pine tree and waited for the world to stop spinning around me. What had that girl hit me with?

“Stella!”

Great. Now he shows up. I could hear Jake getting closer but when I tried to answer the only sound that escaped was a thin, high-pitched squeak. When he finally caught sight of me, he stopped and stared.

“What did you do, hit a tree?”

I just looked at him. Well, actually, I looked at two of him for a moment before my vision cleared. Jake was attempting to play, but his concern was evident in his eyes. I’d scared him.

“I opened a can of whoop ass on this tree here and then I used what I had left over on that little nurse’s aide Marygrace wanted us to interview.”

Jake looked around the clearing. “What’d you do then, bury her?”

I let go of the tree and took a few uncertain steps toward him. “No, idiot, I let her crawl off into the woods to die. It was the only honorable thing to do.”

He nodded. “She cold-cocked you and got away, huh?”

I looked past him and started walking back toward the nursing home. “Yeah, something like that.”

Jake stopped me, studying my face before gently tracing the area around my left eye with his thumb.

“Ouch! Stop that!”

He smiled softly. “You’re gonna have a hell of a shiner.”

“Yeah, well you should see her!”

Jake sighed as I shrugged off his attempt to support me while I walked.

“Where were you, anyway? Here I am, attempting to whoop some scrawny girl’s ass and you’re chatting with Spike on the phone. Where’s your sense of duty? You’re supposed to back up your partner.”

Jake’s expression darkened. “I hope you’re kidding. If somebody hadn’t seen you running and told Marygrace, I’d still be looking for you. I had no idea you’d get into something so fast.”

“Yes, I was kidding. What did Spike want?”

“Among other things, she called to tell me the coroner was about to send Bitsy’s body to the state forensic lab for identification when the feds stepped in and claimed it.”

“How’d they explain that?”

“They told the coroner she was married to a member of the diplomatic corps and that he’d requested it.”

“Which was bullshit, right?”

Jake nodded. “Yep. Guess there’s no doubt about it. She was still on the payroll.”

We’d reached the front entrance to the building, and Marygrace was waiting for us. When she caught sight of me, her expression ran the gamut from surprised to horrified to professionally neutral. I figured I had to look pretty scary to make her pull out her job face.

“Looks like you need a little doctoring,” she said. “Our physician’s assistant, Stephanie, can take a look at you.”

“I’m fine. I just got a little scraped up, that’s all.”

Marygrace raised an eyebrow. “Well, I just thought you might not want to scare the residents. Come on. Let her patch you up. Besides, I figured you’d want to talk to her anyway. She’s the one who usually looks after the residents in place of the doctor.”

I nodded, wishing my head didn’t hurt so much. “You don’t have a doctor on staff?”

Marygrace was scuttling down the hallway but the mention of expense and doctors made her pause momentarily. “With Medicaid paying? Hell, places like this don’t get real doctors. We get their P.A. and if it’s really bad, we might see them at the end of the day, when they’re already too tired and could care less about whether one old person lives or dies.” She apparently thought better of this because she quickly tacked on a disclaimer. “Not all of them are sharks. I’m just saying most of them are.”

“The doc here, is he a shark?”

“No comment,” she answered grimly. “But I like Stephanie.”

“Was she the one who initially treated Baby today?”

Marygrace shook her head. “Nope. She was seeing patients in Dr. Alonzo’s office when Baby got hurt. The charge nurse sent her on to the hospital and she’s still there. But Stephanie saw her after she reported someone had been in her room two days ago.”

Jake was walking along with us, the frown on his face deepening with every step. When Marygrace stopped to speak to a resident, I took him aside. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m just trying to put this all together. I mean, why go out a bathroom window and not a door?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Marygrace said, rejoining us and shamelessly eavesdropping. “All the doors are locked. You can only get out by punching in the code on the keypad that’s located next to each door.”

“And don’t all the employees have the code?”

“Sure,” Marygrace said, grinning. “Unless you change it and don’t tell them. That’s what I did as soon as I got back here. I wanted to control who was coming and going until the police got here. The front door was the only door with open access and I had the front desk clerk writing down the names of everyone who arrived or departed.”

“So, why didn’t she just walk out the front door?”

“Look at him!” Marygrace said, gesturing to Jake. “He’s got cop written all over him! He’s big. He’s got a bulge under his suit coat and he was outside talking on the cell phone right in front of the building. I’d take the window too, if I’d been in her shoes.”

I nodded, making a mental note to get the name of the staffing agency the nursing home used to hire Aida. They’d be reluctant to talk, if not downright uncooperative, fearing a lawsuit from the nursing home and citing confidentiality, but we could still try.

A tall woman with close-cropped wiry black hair stood in front of the North Hall nurses’ station, writing in a thick chart. She wore a spotless white lab coat, open to reveal a downright sexy pink knit top that crisscrossed her ample chest and highlighted the rich mocha color of her skin. As we approached, she looked up, took one look at my face and turned away from her paperwork.

“You don’t have enough to do, Marygrace, you gotta go gathering people up from the parking lot for me to see?”

Marygrace went off into one of her long, rapid-fire explanations punctuated with requests for medical attention and information. Within moments I was sitting in a chair in the conference room wincing as Stephanie dabbed Betadine on the scrape above my eye and Jake peppered her with questions about Baby Blankenship.

“Without Baby or her P.O.A. signing a release, I can’t talk to you about her condition or any treatment I may or may not have provided. As I understand it, you two have been retained by Marygrace to investigate the theft of items from Ms. Blankenship’s room. Frankly, I don’t see how I can help you.”

Great. What now? I looked to Marygrace and saw her deep in thought. She cocked her head to the side and smiled at the physician’s assistant.

“Of course you can’t talk about Baby, specifically, but you could speak generally about people like Baby, people who…I don’t know, let’s say, elderly people with maybe midstage Alzheimer’s.”

Marygrace was fairly levitating with the possibilities of obtaining information from Stephanie without breaking the laws pertaining to confidentiality.

“How about this,” Marygrace continued. “Suppose someone with a fair amount of memory loss encountered a trauma and lost something important to them. Suppose they then forgot what they’d lost. Would there be a chance that they could wake up tomorrow and perhaps remember more details, like the specific item that was missing or the description of the person who’d taken it?”

Stephanie smiled. “Perhaps. It happens. Of course, they could wake up tomorrow and have forgotten the entire incident, too.”

Jake was worse at hiding his frustration than I was. He fidgeted impatiently and finally turned to Marygrace. “Can we see her room?”

Marygrace sighed. “Sure. I told the staff to leave the room untouched, but I was too late. They were already trying to put things in order by the time I got back to the facility. They didn’t know. I guess they don’t watch those police shows like I do.” She smiled ruefully. “Come on. I’ll show you her room while Stephanie finishes doctoring Stella.”

“Wait a minute! We’re done, aren’t we?” I jumped up off the stool despite Stephanie’s attempts to continue dabbing me with swabs and ointments and took off after Jake and Marygrace. No way was I getting the short end of this investigation.

“Thanks, Stephanie,” I called over my shoulder, drowning out her protests.

I reached the door to Baby Blankenship’s room just as the other two were walking into it. It looked like any room in any hospital or nursing home in America, with the exception of a wall covered in family photographs and some other brightly colored knickknacks scattered around.

I had just begun carefully inspecting a photograph of a much younger Bitsy, surrounded by the rest of her family at what appeared to be a birthday party for Baby, when my cell phone rang.

“Stella?” Nina’s voice sounded strange, as if she had a cold or was trying not to cry.

“What’s wrong?”

“I was trying to help,” she said and sniffed loudly.

“Nina, tell me what’s going on.”

Jake and Marygrace were both studying me with concerned expressions.

“Well, after you guys left I remembered I had a hair appointment later and like, well, I have this paint chip I wanted Verna to see, you know, so she’d know what color I wanted for the highlights this time?”

“Uh-huh.”

It would do no good to rush Nina. It would only make her back up and start the tale all over again. The best thing I could do was pray she wound it up in short order.

“Well, you know how you were talking about that limo and all and Aunt Lucy being so pissed?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It was there! He was dropping her off! So I like, got the license plate number and—Oh, God, Stella! It’s awful!”

Nina began to sob. When she gulped air, I broke in.

“Nina, what’s awful?”

“Oh!” she wailed. “I didn’t know I was so good!”

“Nina, what are you talking about?”

My cousin sniffed loudly, sounding offended. “Stella! For pity’s sake, try and follow what I’m saying! I am just like, totally good at this detective crap! I found out who he is and…and…”

“And?” I wanted to jump through the phone and throttle the girl.

“And, well, I found out too much, that’s what!”

This was followed by a renewed burst of crying, punctuated by loud sniffs and snorts.

“Nina,” I said, trying to be heard over the sheer volume of her sobbing. “Where is Spike? Let me talk to her.”

“She…she…can’t come. She went to see the…D.A.” More crying followed and I silently counted to ten and prayed for patience.

“Okay, Nina, now try and get hold of yourself. I need to know what you found out.”

Nina snuffled, blew her nose loudly and said, “All right.” She drew in a deep breath and said absolutely nothing.

“Nina, who is he? What did you learn about the man? Is he a criminal? What is it?”

“I can’t tell you over the phone!”

“Nina! Why not?”

Silence from her end of the line and then the infernal tear machine cranked up and she was off and running.

“You…you…you have to come here…to Aunt Lucy’s. Right now! Oh, this is awful!”

“Has something happened to Aunt Lucy?” Fear rose in my chest, tightening my throat as visions of Aunt Lucy at the hands of an evil stranger snapped in a rapid-fire slide-show of possibilities.

“No! She’s out again somewhere…probably with…him.”

Jake was mouthing “What? Why is she crying?”

All I could do was shake my head and frown. It was impossible to explain while also trying to calm Nina down.

“All right, honey,” I said finally. “We’ll be there as soon as we can. It shouldn’t be more than a half hour at the most.”

“A half hour?” she wailed.

“Twenty minutes.”

“Oh…oh…oh!” She was hiccupping now. “What…what…ever!”

I snapped the cell shut and rolled my eyes at Jake. “I don’t know what’s going on, but it doesn’t sound good, and Spike’s out working on the D.A. I don’t think there’s a lot we can accomplish here right now. Maybe we should return when Baby gets back from the hospital and has had some time to rest.”

Marygrace’s eyes widened. “You guys can’t stay away too long. What if Baby comes back and something else happens? I want you to protect her!”

Jake looked puzzled. “I thought you wanted us to find whatever got stolen. You didn’t say anything about protection.”

Marygrace stamped her tiny foot and glared at him. “Aw, come on man! Do I have to spell out everything? Baby got hurt and that aide beat up Stella. I’d say the woman needs protection!”

A little muscle in Jake’s jaw began to twitch and I knew he was getting frustrated with Marygrace’s impatience.

“Okay, Marygrace, if you want to hire private protection…”

Marygrace held up her hand, stopping me. “Whoa, now exactly how much is that going to cost? I mean, I am a social worker. Money doesn’t just grow on trees, you know. Anyway, I guess the facility might pay, but I need to check it out. In the meantime, we have to take care of Baby. Where’s your—”

I broke her off before she could question my civic-mindedness.

“All right! All right! Jake, how about you drop me at Aunt Lucy’s and go on to the hospital so you can keep an eye on Baby. I’ll go see what’s got Nina so upset, then relieve you at six, either there or here, depending on when they release her.”

Jake nodded but before he could add anything else, his cell phone rang.

After he said hello all I could hear was the sound of Nina sobbing. I snatched the phone out of his hand and pressed the receiver to my ear.

“All right! We’re coming! You don’t have to call Jake to ride herd on me, okay?”

“It’s a matter…of…life and death,” she said shakily. “I thought I might’ve forgotten to…tell you…that.”

The cell phone went dead as Nina severed the connection. Oh, this was just too unbelievable. We finally get a case that has nothing to do with insurance fraud or cheating spouses and what happens? We develop a rash of personal problems! Somebody give me a break!

Still, a little flame of apprehension ignited inside my chest, growing stronger the closer I got to my office. Nina was a dingbat, no doubt about it, but she rarely got upset without cause. In fact, Nina never overreacted, at least not in the presence of real danger. So something was wrong, all right, and if Nina was on target, it would be a matter of life and death.