“I lurk around the Nurse’s Station Gracie; and they don’t even notice me. I guess it’s like you becoming self-employed as an investigator for something to do; I like to listen to the latest gossip because otherwise, it’s pretty boring around here.
“About fourteen million times a day my Mom will ask me if I’m in pain (I’m not, because I’m pretty well medicated) and will ask me the same amount of times, if not more, if I would like something to eat. No. I’m not hungry. A person can only eat so much ice cream for breakfast.
“So I eavesdrop when my family isn’t hovering around me. And I’ve heard the same complaints over and over again, from staff members, volunteers and family members. They all are surprised at the amount of money the Hospice took from their accounts.
“For example, that weird smelling Mr. Payne was in this morning talking to the RN. He said that he thought he donated one hundred dollars, but his account was charged one thousand.
“Side point Gracie, he said that he was inspired by the life of one Gracie Noseworthy. Seriously, are you holding out on me? You can’t be knocking boots with him; he smells like fish!
“Anyhow, he ended up saying that he didn’t want to make waves, that he would just leave things as they were, but he wanted the RN to pass the information onto the financial office. He actually showed them his receipt for a charitable donation of one hundred dollars. He wasn’t super mad, but he did insist that a new tax receipt be sent to him.
“Well Gracie, his experience is one of many. I’ve overheard so many people discuss this matter of bumped up donations and so many of them are confused but decide ‘not to make waves.’
“And to a person, they all say something like, “I had that um, efficient Nurse run my card through. I would talk to her, but she’s the one who’s missing. I hope she’s okay.”
“Here’s what I think. Not only did Nurse Emma rip off drugs from dying patients, but she also ripped off those people who donated to the Hospice. And I don’t think anyone is reporting it.
“So that’s what I would like you to investigate. I don’t think the extra money all these people were charged went to the Hospice. I think it went into Nurse Emma’s pocket!
“As payment I enclose one pair of pink runners. Ha! How’s that for a contract and a payment?
Now, on to the confession portion of this letter.
“I had to wait for several people to die. Me included. I know, it sounds weird, but you’ll understand in a second.
“A group of us killed Nurse Emma.”
Gracie blinked her eyes rapidly and informed her fur babies that her drink needed refreshing. She gently patted their bottoms to get them to slide off her lap. Frank gave her a sleepy cross-eyed stare, then jumped off and positioned himself in front of the treat cupboard. Zoey just curled up on the floor until Gracie opened the treat bag, then she was beside Frank like a shot.
After their treats, the cats settled themselves on the window seat while Gracie made herself a stronger rum and coke and looked at the pink running shoes with a sad little grin. She had asked Petra what size shoes she wore. In her usual irreverent manner, Petra had said, “Surprise me.”
It was Petra who surprised Gracie. With her drink in hand, Gracie was ready to read the confession part of Petra’s letter.
“You might know…” and here Petra wrote a list of five names of patients at the Hospice, “well, their life expectancy wasn’t too much longer than mine. But you know, Doctors can get things wrong, so as a failsafe, I gave Mom this same list of names and asked her to mail you this package a month after we all were dead. I hope she does. Or maybe I should be writing, I hope she did.”
“She did,” said Gracie softly.
“We were in agony because of Nurse Emma. She not only withheld drugs, she withheld basic hygiene. She was a witch if there ever was one.
“It was kind of funny how we decided to kill her. It was happy hour and the six of us were sitting in the lounge drinking. No family or staff around and we were talking about which was worse, being in pain or being in wet diapers. I know, I know, Nurse Jasmine always reminds us that they are briefs, but they’re adult diapers.
“Bob just said, ‘let’s kill her’ and we all agreed. It was a simple as that Gracie.
“You should know by now, that for twenty-six years old, I’m pretty immature and I like me that way. But I did think about the morality of the matter. Did my morals go out the window because of seeing friends in pain? Or because I was going to die, and I wouldn’t have to face the consequences? Or was it because I felt Nurse Emma Bartlett didn’t deserve to live?
“I think it was all three things.
“So, how we were going to do it was the next topic of discussion.
“We came up with a fitting death. Louise, who had a room furthest from the Nursing Station, would ask to be toileted at night when only you know who was on duty. Once she was up in the lift, she would say she changed her mind and asked to be put back to bed. But before Nurse Emma could lower the lift, Louise was going to shout, “I dropped my ring in the toilet! I’ll pay you fifty bucks to get it for me.”
“Nurse Emma would probably agree to get the ring, but she would be angry to have to reach into the toilet. Gloves only go so high, you know. We wanted her to be beyond irritated when she died.
“Meantime, Bob would catch a ride with me because he was pretty weak and needed to save his strength. Yup, sitting on my lap while I cranked up the power on my wheelchair! We planned that Ann, Chester and Wally would already be in the room.
“Once Bob and I arrived, Chester would open the bathroom door and I’d wheel up and Bob would kick Nurse Emma in the butt. Wally would let the lift down and Louise would just sit on Nurse Emma.
“We didn’t know how long it would take her to drown, so after Ann stole the keys, she would be the guard at the door in case the other Nurse came back from her break earlier than usual.
“Well Gracie, our plan worked even better than we hoped.
“Nurse Emma was already angry when she came into Louise’s room. When she saw Ann, Chester and Wally there, she said “Oh, so you want an audience Louise? Far be it from me to stop you!” and she left the bathroom door wide open. Like I told you, she was a number one grade A witch!
“When Louise yelled out, ‘I dropped my ring’ etc., Nurse Emma negotiated for a hundred and fifty dollars. When Bob and I arrived, there was Nurse Emma bent over the toilet searching for the imaginary ring.
“Bob gave her a good boot and Wally was on the control button like lightening. The sling was a bit slow in lowering, so Bob kept kicking her.
“Once Louise was sitting on her, Ann had the keys and stood by the door. Chester felt a little left out, because he didn’t have to do his job, so he searched her pockets.
“Gracie, you would never believe what he found! Not only vials of hydromorphone, but several syringes. Chester took the initiative and injected her with all of whatever was in the needles.
“We decided to leave the vials in her pocket, just in case anybody found her body. Bet you’re wondering what we did with her body. I’ll tell you in a minute.
“I’ve got pretty good upper body strength even yet, so I pulled Louise out of the sling in a kind of bear hug and Chester, Wally and even Bob, helped balance Louise while I rolled over to her bed and she kind of flung herself on it. Wally threw a blanket over her, because she was pretty much naked from the waist down, but Louise was fine with her lack of clothing.
“It’s all bought and paid for boys!” she said. That Louise. What a card! Much later, she even rang for help and blamed Nurse Emma for leaving her there on the bed hours before. The next Nurse was appropriately horrified.
“But back to the body and what we did with it. Ann had walked down to the utility room and unlocked it with Nurse Emma’s keys and brought out one of those big green garbage bins and rolled it to Louise’s room.
“We used the sling to hoist Nurse Emma out of the toilet and dump her in the garbage bi
n. Then all of us, except Louise and Bob, took out the garbage. Yes Gracie, we used the keys to open the back door and rolled the bin out to be picked up by the sanitation department as part of their regular routine.
“That’s my confession Gracie. I hope you don’t think less of me; but even if you do, I won’t care. I’ll be dead.
“Now here’s the second part of the investigation. Nurse Emma’s body went missing, but I think I know what happened to it. After we killed her, we did get worried that the body would be found too quickly. I mean, the Huckleberry landfill isn’t so huge that a body dumped from a garbage truck wouldn’t be noticeable.
“So we would see one another and shrug and say, “What are they going to do to us? Give us a life sentence? We already have one.” Did I feel remorse at what we had done? No. I kept getting the giggles. The Staff noticed and suggested that my pain meds were too strong, but they weren’t going to do anything about it.
“Which was nice. I was finally enjoying life. By enjoying life, Gracie, I meant being able to sleep for at least four hours at a stretch before the pain woke me up.
“But enough of that. I don’t know if I was curious or scared, but I decided to look in the garbage can the next night.
“It was empty.
“Here’s something else you may not know Gracie, but Huckleberry does have a seedy underbelly. A guy we called ‘Crackhead Billy’ used to come by most nights and search the garbage bins for drugs even though he had been told that the Hospice isn’t in the practice of throwing out drugs.
“Well, we throw out the occasional Nurse with drugs in her pocket, but that’s not routine.
“Security would find him sleeping in the back most mornings and run him off. Oddly enough, the night after we killed Nurse Emma, we haven’t seen Crackhead Billy.
“I think he found Emma’s body, found the vials of hydromorphone, used them and got higher than a kite. When he came down, he saw Emma’s body and figured he killed her and then hid the body and then moved onto another town.
“In other news, the floor of the gazebo was undergoing some repairs at the same time. I think he hid the body there. The second part of the investigation then, is up to you. You have to decide if there is any good reason to find Nurse Emma’s body.
“Is there actually someone out there who misses her?
“And is there any good reason to inform the families of six dead people that their loved ones were murderers?
“Does one outweigh the other?
“Gracie, I know this is a lot to take in, but from the short time I’ve known you, I think you can handle it. After all, you were the woman who joked with a double amputee about racing up a mountain. And then bought her a pair of pink runners.
“Did you see what I wrote on them?
Thanks for listening Gracie and I hope you are not too disgusted with me.
I’m not.”
Petra.
***
“So what was written on the runners?” Ted asked. They were standing in the Gazebo in the front of the Hospice. Gracie asked Ted to meet her there because she had a conundrum. She didn’t tell Ted about the contents of the letter; only that she had received one. It had disturbing information that she wasn’t sure she should reveal as it was told to her in confidence. She also received a pair of pink runners.
“They had quotes written on their soles in surprisingly good penmanship. The right one says, “I was so sad that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet. So I said, “Got any shoes you’re not using?”
Ted frowned. “That’s terrible. What does the left one say?”
“Some people are anchored to this world by their feet, others by their fears.”
Ted nodded. “Well that one’s good. So, do you want to tell me about this foot person or is that part of your conundrum?”
Gracie changed the subject. “Look at these carnations. Such a beautiful red. And so durable. Just think, it was only two months ago this gazebo was ripped apart, with floorboards all over the flower bed and yet, the carnations thrived despite being in the middle of a construction zone.”
Ted bowed to Gracie’s train of thought. He knew she was working things out.
“And speaking of things thriving, our relationship is doing quite well despite my flower fiasco!”
They both chuckled. Ted had decided to get a gift for Gracie just because. He knew she liked peonies, so he bought her a beautiful blown glass sculpture that doubled as an ornate vase. As he walked up to her home, in a fit of inspiration, he cut one of her dark crimson peonies and placed it in the center of the gift.
Gracie wasn’t home, so he let himself in with his key, filled the vase with water and admired how the peony gracefully floated on the top. He snapped a photo then left the gift on the kitchen table.
When Gracie came home, her cats were having fun chasing ants. Ted wasn’t a gardener and had tuned Gracie out when she told him about her solution to stop the ants from climbing up the stalks of her beautiful peonies.
She was not going to use poison bait, so instead she wrapped tape around the stalks, sticky side out, to catch the ants.
Apparently, it wasn’t effective. As the peony blossom opened in the water, the ants came out and climbed out. Ted had shown the photo to Gracie to prove that the ants were hiding. She thought the whole thing was hilarious.
Gracie kissed Ted. “You were forgiven immediately.”
Another longer embrace followed.
Suddenly Gracie pushed Ted away and announced, “She had a boyfriend!”
“Had?” Ted asked. “What is this had business? Was that kiss so bad I’ve been fired as a boyfriend?”
“No, I’m thinking about Nurse Emma Bartlett. She had a boyfriend. Do you think he misses her?”
“I think he misses the drugs she used to sell him.” Ted pointed to Gracie. “And that’s something the general public doesn’t know at this point. I’d like to keep it that way.”
Gracie started to look at her feet. She squinted her eyes to try and look between the floorboards in the gazebo.
“Pauline said she had no family to speak of. But what about the theft of thousands of dollars of donations?” Gracie rubbed her jaw while Ted’s jaw dropped open. Gracie said slowly, “Was the boyfriend complicit in the defrauding scheme?”
“I don’t know where you get your information from, my dear Gracie, but that information is not for public consumption either!”
Gracie reached over and picked a carnation and placed it behind her left ear.
“If we were in Hawaii, this would mean I’m off the market,” she said.
Ted groaned. “If we were in Huckleberry, which wait a minute, we are, this would mean you are trying to distract me. Gracie, please tell me what you know about this missing Nurse.”
“You know this spring when we had a plethora of bodies in garden ponds?” she began.
“Oh good lord, don’t tell me Nurse Emma is in a pond somewhere? And never use the word plethora again in the same sentence as bodies!”
Gracie was silent. She continued to weigh the repercussions of keeping the contents of the letter from Petra Kennedy secret against the harm it would do if the contents were revealed.
She stamped her foot several times. “Do you think this floor is as secure as it should be?”
Ted sighed. “I wish we could have just kept kissing, but you had to have a conundrum. In your oh so subtle way, I’m sure you’re telling me Nurse Emma is buried in the gazebo.”
Gracie whispered even though no one was around, “You might want to ask Crackhead Billy why he put her body there.”
Ted put on his serious policeman face. “Just tell me this Gracie, is this letter a confession from Crackhead Billy that he killed Nurse Emma Bartlett?”
Gracie stared him in the eye and said honestly, “No, it is not a confession from Crackhead Billy. It is not even from Crackhead Billy but is full of what you might call hearsay.”
Ted remained serious. “Yet, you have reason
to believe that he put the body in the gazebo?”
“I do and I wish you could go ask him instead of grilling me.”
“And I wish you could say those words ‘I do’ under different circumstances, but neither of us are going to get our wishes granted. Crackhead Billy overdosed the same night Nurse Emma went missing.”
Gracie was overjoyed. “Well that’s good news! An open and shut case, I’d say.”
She stamped her feet more forcefully and then started jumping. “Let’s open this baby up and see what we can find!”
Crackhead Billy had indeed dragged Nurse Emma to the open pit in the gazebo and covered her up with a thin layer of dirt. As a former carpenter, Billy Gervais aka Crackhead Billy, still had the skill to nail some decking to the framework. When the regular carpenter arrived the next day, he just finished the job.
Gracie’s stamping jarred the body. Her jumping jarred the skeleton even further. As it shifted a now rusted pin snapped from a nameplate which fell into the dirt.
Finally, Emma Bartlett was no longer falsely identified with the honorable profession of being a Nurse.
Reap What You Sow?
Lila Jeffries was cold. The kind of cold that makes you hate everyone and everything. She piled on the blankets, but still her bones rattled.
She was filled with resentment and excuses. It was everybody’s fault that she had to live this way. Her deadbeat husband that went and died on her decades ago and left her with a crippling mortgage and two brats.
She hadn’t seen the boy or the girl in years. “Probably wouldn’t recognize them even if they did come around,” she muttered.
She could see her breath in the air. It was almost summer, and yet she had icicles hanging from every piece of furniture in her house. It was those damn microwaves. They went through everything and changed it. Even her brain. They put electricity into her brain.
And now they were trying to freeze her to death.
The Doctors didn’t believe her.
Well she didn’t care anymore. She was going to do get those microwaves if that was the last thing she did.
Gore in the Garden Page 7
